Powers of Tau in Asynchrony

Sourav Das

Network and Distributed System Security (NDSS) Symposium 2024 · Day 2 · Applied Cryptography

Sourav Das’s talk, "Powers of Tau in Asynchrony," introduces a groundbreaking distributed protocol for securely and robustly generating **q-Strong Diffie-Hellman (q-SDH)** parameters in an asynchronous network. These parameters, often referred to as "powers of tau," are a fundamental building block in modern cryptography, essential for the efficient construction of **zero-knowledge succinct non-interactive arguments of knowledge (SNARKs)**, polynomial and vector commitments, verifiable secret sharing, and distributed randomness beacons. The core challenge lies in generating these parameters—a vector of group elements g, τg, τ²g, ..., τºg, where 'g' is an elliptic curve generator and 'τ' is a hidden, random field element—while ensuring 'τ' remains secret from any adversary.